Pynchon & rap

[Terrance]

Monte Davis wrote:
> 
> One possibility -- which, alas, would not support much flame-baiting -- is
> simply that in the ~30 years since GR's composition, the Holocaust has come
> to assume a much larger place in our collective memory of WWII.

Snip

> 
> Back when Hank James sat around the bong with Tom and Dick Farina and Jules
> Siegel, he used to mutter "Hey, man, we must grant the artist his subject,
> his idea, his donnee: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it."

Have you read Andrew Gordon's essay? 

"I consider Pynchon a quintessential American novelist of
the 1960s because he came of age as an artist during that
entropic decade and shows its stamp in all his work: V.
(1963) covers the century form 1898 to 1956, but most of it
was composed during the Kennedy years...GR (1973),
ostensibly about W.W.II, was written during the Vietnam War
and indirectly reflects that topsy turvey time...

Also see William E Grim's essay, Postmodernist Satire in
Vineland

Not quite equal to, or as postmodern itself, as Weisnburger
on Pynchon. His book is 
Fables of Subversion, excellent. 


Also see, Jeffery S. Baker's Amerikka Uber Alles



Several Pynchon critics argue that at the center of P's
fiction is the American 1960s. 
What does that mean? 


It has not been mentioned here recently, but IG Farben,
while not the bull's-eye, is certainly close to the center
of GR. 

see Sasuly. For anyone who has read this book I would be
interested in discussing how Pynchon employs it in GR. I'm
not sure myself, but it is interesting that Sasuly's book,
IG Farben (1947) seems to treat the Holocaust pretty much as
P does in GR. 

Sasuly is very clear, IG Farben was guilty of "every major
crime committed by the Nazis in the course of World War II,
including profiting by the seizure of "non-Aryan" property,
sending millions of slave workers from conquered countries
to work in Germany and a secret, but sufficiently horrible
shore in the operations of the ghastly murder mills like
Auschwitz and Maidanek." 

Having read now three more recent publications on the
subject, Sasuly's book remains fascinating not only because
it was P's source for much GR material, but because of its
focus on the investigation, cartels and the USA. 

It seems to me that P is writing about the 1960s business
environment as much as the 1930s. 



BTW, when I was reading through the NY Times, the dates for
the 1950s chapters in V., I recall that the paper used the
word Holocaust to describe large automobile accidents on the
NY State highway system and so forth.